Losing and Gaining
by bugsmama07
Summary: Bella thinks she's found adventure and freedom. She found something else that she wasn't looking for. Season of Our Discontent entry.


**Contest: Season of Our Discontent Anonymous Angst Contest**

**Pen Name: bugsmama07**

**Twitter or Facebook (will be removed before we post): Whitney O'Neal (FB)**

**Title: Losing and Gaining**

**Picture Prompt Number: #4**

**Pairing: Bella/Edward**

**Rating: M**

**Word Count: 7,056**

**Summary: Bella thinks she's found adventure and freedom. She found something else that she wasn't looking for. **

**Warnings and Disclaimer: Death, abuse, and drug use.**

^/^\^

Air felt fresher, cleaner, and safer even. The heavy burden she felt on her shoulders was gone. Feeling as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her conscience and from her soul, Bella finally felt free.

Finding each other was like breathing new life into a dying soul. He was everything she never thought she'd want; she was desired and he needed to feel valued in life. Although, in the end, neither were sure whose soul was truly dying: his or hers.

^/^\^

Bella spent every weekday with the same routine: get up, dress for work, spend six monotonous hours shuffling through mountains of paperwork, come home and eat dinner with her mother and stepfather, only to go to bed and dream of something exciting happening to her. The weekends were no better. While her friends were out partying and living the life of an average twenty three year old, Bella spent Friday and Saturday nights curled up in her step dad's thermal shirts and her never-used-for-yoga yoga pants, watching television or reading her favorite books.

Bella had never been comfortable as the center of attention, preferring to try and fit in with people that shared similar interests as she. Joining various clubs and even tutoring other kids didn't help to quell the desire for adventure that seemed to be lacking. Bella always felt she never truly belonged, never quite fit in with everyone else; not even her own family.

She needed something-something she wasn't even sure of, something she didn't even know about yet. Bella needed it like she needed air to breathe, or she feared she would lose her sanity.

^/^\^

He was the outcast—the black sheep—the one that never conformed to anyone's rules but his own. He spent years trying to stick it to the man. From the age of fifteen, he was on his own, living anyway that he deemed fit. Fighting with his father landed him in foster care, where he was hardly ever supervised. He spent most of his time away from the foster family, running with people from the wrong side of the tracks. He got to live as a grown up, but still reaping the adolescent benefits of having a roof over his head and food to eat, while not having to worry how he got them.

His group of friends consisted of other misfits, some of which came from broken homes, and others who were searching for the most trouble they could encounter. Drugs, alcohol, tattoos, sex, and rock and roll seemed to be the center of their universe. They had done it all by the time they were even legal to vote.

When the boredom set in, the group dispersed and he found himself longing for some validation, from someone. To feel something other than abandoned, he needed someone to save him; even if it was from himself.

^/^\^

The night they met wasn't spelled out in the stars, nor did fate feel to merge these two souls together for eternity. It was sheer opportunity; she wanted to feel rebellious by getting a tattoo and he was the artist that was going to mark her. It wasn't some love at first sight or instant attraction thing. It just was what it was. The words and experiences they had in their lives led to hours and hours of conversation after the tattoo was finished and healed over. They felt like best friends who shared anything with each other.

Their outward appearances were completely opposite. She was the straight laced girl from next door, and he was the bad boy that every mother warned their daughter about. Prim and proper met wild and dangerous. They were like oil and water, fire and ice, night and day. Yet neither could deny the connection they felt deep in their bones.

After weeks of hanging out with a couple mutual friends, and late nights that included more stories and often trips to the diner in the early hours of the morning, things began to change. A small shift in the way they saw each other. Something was drawing them together and both of them had no qualms to stop it.

Bella was far from being a virgin, but far enough away from being a whore that he was glad. He knew he could show her things that she hadn't even thought existed. He had plenty of experience. The nine year age gap could play to both of their advantages. His colorful tattoo markings and the various pieces of steel in his body held an allure for Bella like no other before him. Meanwhile, the softness and almost untouched creamy skin of her body made him ravenous to show her his world.

^/^\^

Introducing each other slowly to their families, hers met him and he with trepidation, and his met her with an aloofness that she noticed right away. They chose to live their own life, in their own bubble together, locked away from any outside forces that thought to tear them apart. His mother thought the girl was gullible for believing the shit that her son spewed to her in moments of passion. Her parents knew that she was too naïve to navigate the world with him beside her. Both sets of parents left them alone, to forge the way they were so adamant to find, and let them make their mistakes, learn from their own lessons.

After only a few months of knowing each other, he convinced Bella to quit her meaningless job and get a different one, to move away from her hovering mother, and live with him. The things that he told her helped her see in a different light, made Bella feel like she had been living a sheltered life. She felt like she hadn't ever been allowed to truly experience life, so she took the bull by the horns and for once, did what her twisted mind told her to, instead of listening to her conscience.

Once he had her to himself, ninety percent of the time, he let his true nature shine. For someone that should have had life figured out by the age of thirty two, he was simply coasting through, trying to lead Bella in a life that _he_ wanted, instead of what_ they_ wanted. He made the choices, told her who to hang out with and eventually, she was almost completely cut off from her family and friends. It was all for the thrill of having him and a life free of someone telling her what to do, like her mother and stepfather. Little did she know, she wasn't getting away from it all, she was just letting someone else take control.

Only six months into this semblance of a relationship, he laid a bomb on Bella. He had a son that needed him. A son, who lived four states away with Grandma, that needed his father, and he couldn't choose between his love and his child. Bella chose for him, and they packed up and left within the month for the unknown.

^/^\^

Uprooting her life for a man was something that Bella thought she'd never do. She headed straight into the dark with no sense of direction from him. Following him seemed like the best thing for them at the time. Although Bella was nervous to live away from her family for the first time, she was also excited for the adventure and ready to finally feel like an adult.

Moving into his childhood home with his mother was a stressful decision for him to make. It was where his child resided, but it held such terrible memories from his upbringing that the tension in the rooms of the home was palpable. The woman's words were short, callous, and her tone was always hateful. She was in the middle of remodeling the house, having ripped out all the appliances from the kitchen and using the living room and den as storage; the second bathroom was completely bare, nothing but the wood from the house showing. The amount of random things stuffed into every nook and cranny of each room was suffocating. Bella felt like she had entered every hoarder's nightmare. A pathway was forged throughout the house, pushing things out of the way to move from area to area; it was the only way to get anywhere inside. The mother demanded, not even asked, that nothing be moved from its spot, as she would know if they stole anything. Feeling like a criminal and unwelcomed, Bella began to think that this drastic change was a horrible mistake.

Only weeks after moving so far away from everything she'd ever known, the changes were coming and they weren't pleasant. The first fight came the very day they arrived at their new home. He showed an aggressive side of himself that Bella had never seen before and it frightened her so. He threatened to leave her alone with nowhere to run to, with no money to go home. He made it very clear that he was the only one she would need from that point on; if she wanted to leave, she could go and fuck herself.

The constant fighting between him and his mother weighed heavily on Bella. She could hear the angry words from the other side of the house, spoken by the woman that apparently hated her so. She'd never had someone fight over her before, and certainly not use the types of words that she heard being screamed from the den—whore, lazy, trashy, gold digger. She wasn't sure why the old woman thought Bella was after someone else's money, especially since she'd always had more than the scum who dragged her to the hell on earth place.

The tension grew thicker when his mother insisted they find jobs and get out of her house, as soon as humanly possible. With his thumb pressed down on her, she took the first job she was offered, minimum wage waitress at a low-scale country club only a few miles from the house. He, of course, offered no reassurance that he would be doing what his bitty mother told him to do. Pleasing both him and his mother seemed like the best thing for Bella to do. She tried to keep herself out of the line of fire when they would fight over the way the grown man was acting towards his mother and towards his son. Being the good little girlfriend who did what she was told was the easiest way for her to be unnoticeable from the old woman.

The weeks slowly passed and he made sure that Bella was never away from him or his son. She was added to the mix like an instant family. She was meant to be the bread winner and the home maker, as well as mother to a son that couldn't have possibly been hers, and still fulfill his every sexual desire. The stress was wearing on her and the fights between them escalated to the point of shouting matches with flying insults and every curse word possible falling from their lips. After the heat was gone from the arguments and she had no will left to defy him, he would turn the tables on her, sweet words and the occasional I'm sorry to get her back into his good graces. Then fuck her over the arm of the couch, back into submission, and then leave, going who knows where. He never gave her any idea of when he would return, instead leaving Bella at home with his child, while he did what he wanted, however he pleased.

As most relationships can attest to, the honeymoon was soon finished, and the real world took over. Once the money ran out, the fighting resumed. Worse and worse each time, until eventually, neither she nor he could take it anymore. She would lock herself away in the bedroom, crying on the phone to anyone that would listen to her, anyone that she hasn't pushed away yet. He would lock himself into the bathroom, turning on the shower and disappearing for several hours each time.

Bella was losing it. She tried caring for the little boy, only four years old with a walking disability, the strain of taking responsibility for everything was wearing her down. After listening to his son screaming for his daddy over and over, night after night, Bella had had enough of his antics. She couldn't even make her own decisions anymore and it was time for a change. She would question him-his whereabouts, his actions when he would finally emerged from a two hour shower, where her tip money went that was set aside for groceries, or her paycheck that was meant for their rent. He would blow her off and act like everything was fine, grumbling about how ungrateful she was for everything he had done for her.

She knew that something was wrong. He wasn't himself. The more months they lived away from her family and closer to his, the more his true nature showed through. Bella knew what kind of person he was now. He was not the man who showed her how exciting and pleasurable sex could be, but someone that would take and take from her. She would give and give, trying to make him happy, and to keep from hearing him yell at her, cut her down, and then watch him scream at the small child that played in the corner with his two trucks.

Bella threatened to leave, time and time again. The most he ever did was change for a day or two, but the he went right back to being the asshole again.

One night, after spending more than twelve hours on her feet, waiting on a huge party at the country club, she came home and within minutes, he was asking for all her tips and the keys to her truck. Once again, he left while she sat at home with his son waiting for him to return. However, this trip was short, and he was home within the hour. After putting the baby in bed and waiting for him to come out of his prison in the bathroom, the clock clicked over to the next day. She watched through nearly closed eyes as steam rolled out of the small enclosed room when he opened the door. He was quiet, assuming she'd gone to bed. Something was off with him, Bella was sure. Every question she asked went verbally unanswered, only responded to by head shakes and nods. When he did finally answer her, his words were slurred and sounded forced through his lips. After questioning him over and over with no real answers, she gave up and went to bed.

Feeling the bed dip down, Bella lay still and silent for quite a while, and hours later, she snuck off to the bathroom. There was something that drove him to hide in there and she was determined to figure out what the hell was going on. She knew that he smoked pot, and that he liked to show her how great ecstasy was, when he was screwing her brains out all over their house, but this, this was something else entirely. Spending what seemed like forever, searching each shelf, each cupboard, even inside the toilet tank, she found it. Wrapped up in a small hand towel, shoved into the very back of the cabinet above the toilet, hidden under his various porno magazines, was the source of all his discontent.

In her worn and tired hands she held a small hand towel and wrapped inside-an empty clear baggie with a white powdery residue, a spoon, and an obviously unclean needle.

^/^\^

Not letting him know that she'd discovered his secret, she tried to come up with a plan. She knew what he was up to now and she desperately needed to be away from him and all the dealings he was involved in. It came to blows one night as she watched him take his little towel into the bathroom and lock himself in for almost four hours that night. As the child, once again, cried for his father, Bella managed to calm him down and get him into bed. She waited for the demon to reveal himself from the shower, and at that moment, she struck.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing? Shooting up drugs in my bathroom, while your child screams for you? Knowing that he's just feet away from you when you shove that needle in your arm? You are a sick fuck. What happens when you overdose on that shit and I have to call 911? Your son will get to watch as someone kicks in the door and drags his daddy away, dead with that fucking thing sticking out of your vein. I want no part of this. The green and the pills are one thing, but this, I can't handle. I'm done. I'm packing my shit and I'm leaving. It's OVER!"

As he stood there and let her rant at him, the calm façade his face held never wavered for a second. Once she huffed her breath when she realized he wasn't going to speak, her face lit up with fire she hadn't felt before. The sting from his hand came, and then the tears fell before she could respond to what he had just done to her. The eerily calm voice from his mouth was even scarier than if he was screaming directly in her face.

"You'll do no such thing. Who will take you in? You have nowhere to go. You know no one here. You're nothing without me." As he turned toward the bedroom, Bella had made up her mind and steeled her resolve.

^/^\^

The next afternoon, due in for work, she quit. She packed her things and was dropping the house key to his mother when he showed up with some skank on his arm, cooing over some tattoo on a private body part that he was about to give her.

"I go to work and you bring home nasty whores? What the hell? I work my ass off for nothing and now you're screwing around behind my back?" Bella paced around the driveway for a few moments, elbows bent so her hands could grip her own lower neck and shoulders. Her breathing was on the brink of hyperventilation while her mind ran a mile a minute.

"You're so fucking stupid to think I'd fuck this chick. She's my boy's old lady anyway. I get all I want, when I want from you. I don't need to stray for strange pussy while I have you at home, working and paying the bills and available when I need you to be." The nonchalant tone in his voice made Bella furious.

"So I'm just your meal ticket and piece of ass? I've moved away from my family, alienated myself from them because of you, and given everything I can to care for you and for your son and this is how you feel about me? That's all I am to you? You're treating me like I'm some slut! I'm so fucking glad that I decided to leave your ass and head back home to people that give a shit about me!"

A small chuckle left his mouth as he shook his head. The other woman was standing off to the side, eyes wide at the insults coming from their mouths to their supposed loved one. She didn't know he had a girlfriend and truly, she was going to try and fuck him for her tattoo.

"Your family gonna help you out when you get there, promises of coming home and being like nothing ever changed? Sometimes I forget how young and gullible you are, even at the hands of your own family. Go ahead. Leave right this second and don't ever come looking for me again." As he turned and motioned for the girl to head into the house, he angled his head over his shoulder and spoke again.

"Just take off and let me explain to my son that the woman he looks to as a mommy left him as well."

As the tears welled up in Bella's mind, she knew that she couldn't just leave, but she couldn't stay either. As much as she had grown to love the little boy, making sure he was taken care of was something that Bella couldn't turn her back on. Truth be told, she felt she needed to take care of the man as well, seeing as his mother really didn't care what happened to her grown son. As the steeled resolve Bella had that morning began to crumble as she thought about what would happen to the boy and father if she left, letting her lover follow her home seemed like the right thing to do; even if it meant bowing down to him, yet again.

Bella stomped back into the house and made some demands of her own. If he wanted to come back with her and get away from his mother, he needed a job and to act like a grown man. Bella couldn't take care of him anymore. He tried selling his bullshit of him doing as he pleased and the calm demeanor between them turned ugly once more. Yelling, cursing, and jabs at their egos had them once again in the driveway, showing the neighborhood the truth behind the façade of a happy couple they truly were. As the voices grew in sound level and words became uglier, Bella climbed in the truck, fumbling with the keys to start the vehicle. When she finally managed to get the truck moving down the driveway, the passenger door flew open and he jumped inside.

"I'm sorry for all the crap I've done to you. It's just that my mom makes me that way. You know I would never be that way when I'm not stressed out from living in the same house with that bitch, letting her belittle me for my every move when it comes to my son. I can't take it anymore. I'm really sorry and I hope you don't try to throw me out of the truck and let me come with you." The remorse was obvious in his eyes, but Bella doubted the sincerity of his words.

Within hours of driving away from hell on earth, she thought things had changed. He was already nicer; seeming to revert back to the man she first met barely nine months ago. They returned to find that Bella's mother had found a small trailer for them to rent. She had even managed to give Bella a job at the new restaurant her mother had opened.

He found side work, doing odd jobs to help bring in money, and he never tried to control or fight with Bella over anything. She got her friends back and her family welcomed her home with open arms and words of worry. They knew every single thing that had happened between the two while they were away, and it had caused a great deal of nervousness. They knew what kind of a person that he was, and what he was capable of, and they all wished Bella would leave him.

Bella felt he was such a lost and troubled soul, that if she gave up on him, he would have no one. All of his old group of friends, his family; everyone had washed their hands of him and his ways of conning and making everything into an opportunity for him to come out as the victor.

Bella felt that he had changed. He was working, helping her, not demanding things, and wasn't hanging out with the local drug addicts. Surely he was making efforts to be what she needed, so how could she give up on him?

^/^\^

Bella thought the world had ended. Everything was changing and was going to be different, and she thought that it could possibly be better. It just had to be. There was nothing to forewarn her of the impending major change in her life.

A baby.

A baby with the man that was not the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Her family wasn't thrilled in the beginning. What kind of a father was this baby going to have when the man already had children and wouldn't care for them?

He spilled his sob story about how the children's mothers didn't give a damn about him, and how the each had run away with his boys. Bella couldn't understand what kind of a woman would take a child away from its father like that. It seemed that no matter how hard he had tried, both the boys' mothers were determined to punish him by taking away his children. His tale of heartbreak made Bella think the world had turned its back on him, by punishing him.

By five months into her pregnancy, things were getting bad again. It didn't take long for Bella to figure it out. He was disappearing again, using her tip money for various things, and he'd stopped working. Once again, he was taking advantage of the situation and manipulating everything to fall in his favor.

By the third time Bella had to walk home from work in the southern heat, two and a half miles, five months pregnant, just to get home and find that he'd turned his phone off and had taken off with her truck, Bella had it. When he came home, happy as a clam, showing her this new little gas operated mini motorcycle he had just purchased, the shit hit the fan.

"First of all, I want to know where you got the money for that thing, and second of all, why in the hell did you not pick me up from work? I let you borrow my truck so you can, supposedly, look for a job and I come home, to find that you bought a fucking motorcycle!" taking a calming breath, Bella thought it best not to get so worked up so she didn't harm the baby growing in her womb.

"I used the rent money, which I can easily make back now that I have my own way to get back and forth to a job. See, now I don't need to keep your truck from you." The beaming smile on his face was almost comical. Bella didn't think he was serious. He truly thought using their bill money to buy something so completely useless and stupid could be made up if his intentions were good. This stupid little game of back and forth between good man and the guy he was when around his mother caused Bella to lose it.

She threw his things out of the trailer, onto the ground, and was screaming nonsense at the top of her lungs. With all the yelling that was happening, it wasn't long before the neighbors called the police. When the two patrol cars showed up and the policemen had assessed the situation, it was clear that someone would be leaving the property that very moment, either Bella willingly or him in cuffs in the back of the police car. The law enforcement had warned both of them of their fighting and wished to not be called back to the residence again. Not wanting to be around him anymore, she offered to pack a bag and go stay with her mother. Grabbing what she could as fast as she could, Bella was almost out of the drive way when he tried to snatch open her door. By this time, the police had left and they were the only two remaining on the property.

"Don't leave, Bella. You can't leave. Please, don't take my baby away from me, too." The guilt he tried to instill into Bella meant nothing anymore. Tears were threatening to spill from his eyes and there was an obvious sadness to his words. Bella felt terrible for leaving, making him think she would steal away his child like the others and leave him alone, once again. However, the instinct to protect herself and her unborn child won out and Bella finally used self-preservation against him.

"I'm just going away for a few days. I'll be back when we've calmed down and we can talk this out."

The few days turned into a week, and soon he was showing up at her job, begging for forgiveness in front of the whole town. Thinking she should at least try and work it out for the sake of her unborn child, she returned to the home they shared, and it started all over again.

Only two days after coming back, Bella threw him out, again. She knew that his friends, who were supposed to be helping him find a job, were getting high and drinking together. The money for the rent went to that stupid mini motorcycle neither of them had a use for, and the utter hate that was creeping into her heart was threatening to spill out.

The summer was in full force and Bella's lover had talked her and his mother into letting his son come spend a few weeks with them before he started school. Bella was glad he would get to see his child, but thought of nothing but how much more the situation would be like when they lived with the little boy.

After working all day, Bella came home to a messy house, no food to eat, a screaming toddler, and a pissed off man. After calming down the two boys, trying to find something to cook, and shuffling the dirty laundry away from the bedroom door, all she wanted was a nap.

He thought she was ignoring him and started the fight. It ended with her calling the police and him promising to go to rehab. Bella told him that he could leave, go to wherever he wanted, and that she would raise their baby all on her own. She needed nothing from him, wanted nothing from him.

Once again, the police warned them about the arguments, especially in front of the small child. They threatened to arrest them and send the little boy back to his grandmother if they were called one more time. As one of the police knew Bella personally and knew the little boy wasn't her son, they weren't allowed to leave him in Bella's care and remove the father from the residence. Bella was made to leave, at least for the night. The end of their relationship was coming, Bella could feel it.

^/^\^

Her saving grace came in the form of the sixteen year old daughter of a family friend. The girl, Angela, had come to spend the summer with Bella's sister, Alice, and now she was going home. Bella begged her mother to let her take Angela to meet her parents. After some pleading, Bella's mother agreed to let her go. However, as soon as they were ready to leave, he showed up and forbade Bella to leave, coming up with idiotic reasons why she couldn't go.

"I don't know who the hell you think you are, but you are not my father and I can damn well do as I please." Bella stormed off and he followed, begging to go with her if she insisted that she be the one to take Angela to her parents. Bella pulled away from the restaurant, leaving him behind.

For thirty minutes, Bella sat at the corner of the only intersection in town, debating whether to go left and back home, where she could pick him up. She knew if she did, they would inevitably argue for eight hours in the car, which was something she wasn't looking forward to. Or, she could go right and take the little girl home to her family, while getting some much needed time away from him. Once the little boy went with his grandmother that very afternoon, Bella knew he would be able to think about things as well.

Bella went right.

^/^\^

The drive was long and quiet, once Bella had dropped off her riding companion. The roads were dark and it was late, but Bella was trying to be cautious as she maneuvered the back roads of the southern state where she'd lived her entire life.

Once she pulled up in her mother's drive way, she was beyond tired and just wished to lie down and sleep. When she opened the back door, there was a house full of her friends and family. She paid them no mind until the dogs began barking, alerting them to someone else in the yard. Bella immediately thought of _him_, and just knew that he'd followed her back to her mom's and was ready to fight.

The whole group was soon outside, the dogs barking at ear piercing levels, as the head lights of the approaching vehicle shut off and the driver stepped out. The brown uniform of the local sheriff made his way over to Bella and uttered words that she could barely register. Words that she'd always dreaded hearing. Words that she knew, in the back of her mind, would someday find her. The arms of her step father caught her as her legs gave out from under her, and her screams began.

^/^\^

It took everything she had to get out of the bed the following week. It took every power of her being to keep the food down, to nourish the child within and to keep herself alive. The same five words were spoken from every mouth in the small community where Bella lived and worked. "_Did you hear anything new?"_ It took her six days to get back to work, and even longer to go back to the house they had shared. His mother showed back up, with the little boy, so she could retrieve some of her son's things, to save for the small boy in the future. Her cold shoulder to Bella was hurtful, but Bella shrugged it off as grief.

The sense of loss was great, but the sense of relief was greater. How could she feel so relieved at a time like this? It shouldn't have happened this way. It shouldn't have happened at all, but the higher being that Bella begun to pray to, worked in ways that no one could expect.

^/^\^

It took several months before Bella was herself again. The stress she had been under began to take its toll on her body and she almost lost her child. The one she worked so hard to keep, the one she clung to now, as an anchor in this crazy world. Time and time again, her body would try to rid itself of the baby until Bella finally made it long enough to give birth to a daughter that was healthy and in no danger.

Life went on and Bella tried to make sense of it. All the while, trying to come to grips with what happened that midsummer's nights months before.

She had always told him that he was going to die messing with all that crap he was touching, ingesting, and putting into his body.

That last she saw him should have gone so much differently. She never should have yelled or said those hateful things to him. If she had known, she might have been able to save him, like she had been trying to do all along.

The car had been sitting in the sun too long, the tires too old, the driver going too fast and had too many drugs in his system to be driving her man around town. The speeds they were traveling weren't safe, and neither of them had the brains to put on a seat belt. The wreck was extremely horrific, leaving both bodies dumped from the car and mutilated to the point neither could have an open casket funeral.

The sight of his mangled body on that steel slab table in the funeral home had almost left her comatose. To know that he wasn't here anymore, broke her soul and begged the question 'why' from the very depths of her being.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that he left her alone with this baby.

After fighting with herself about the reasons behind it, she gave up and just let it be. She gave up and couldn't try to do anything anymore.

The phone calls were nonstop, all hours of the day and night, asking to speak to her, looking for gossip surrounding the accident. It pissed her off to no end. She thought that if she stayed locked away from the world, she could pretend he was still there with her, happy and good like he'd always been during their better times.

"_I wish he would just go away from me. Somewhere safe so that I don't have to deal with him anymore." _That thought resonated through her mind over and over again, millions of times since he had been taken away so cruelly. She thought that if she would have just taken him with her that afternoon, going left instead of right, he might still be there, even if it was just to fight with her. He'd still be here.

"_If God said it was his turn to go, then he would have taken him to Heaven, regardless if he was in that car or in yours. It could be you and that baby we would be burying, as well. God has a plan for you." _

Learning to live again, to live and not feel guilty about having fun, was a hard lesson. Life went on, and no amount of mourning would change it. No amount of guilt could bring him back, no matter how terrible she felt. That one thought, being free from him, lifted the weight from her, and yet it weighed her down at the same time.

Bella's friends gathered around her for comfort, some searching her out years after not speaking to one another. Each telling her, in their own way, that they were there for her however she might need them.

^/^\^

Time rolled on and healed the wounds of her heart. The guilt lessened and she could be happy. Losing him was a wakeup call to everyone. When she met someone new, she knew she shouldn't feel bad about it; that she should embrace it and never let it go. Though it was still hard.

Falling in love with the new one, watching him fall in love with her daughter, making her daughter his own; Bella knew he was the one she was meant for. Thinking back, she realized that she'd known all along, from the moment she met him a decade before.

Knowing him as a teenager, the two of them falling in love with each other at such a young age, then falling away from one another, took its toll on them. They spent years as friends and confidants, only speaking sporadically throughout the ten years they spent apart. It tore him-her first true love-to shreds as he listened to the things she had been through with the man that helped create her daughter. The person she spent all that time with, being abused and mistreated, because she felt guilty if she left him; only for him to leave her instead. Her first love watched her suffer through the nightmares, the heartbreak, and the guilt before he told her it was okay to feel relieved, and it was okay to feel something for someone else.

The day they were married, bringing together the two halves of one soul, brought peace to Bella. She knew in her heart that if she had never followed her older man to the ends of sanity and back again, she might not have regained her first love.

Each yeah when the date of the accident crept up on Bella it always made her feel something other than happiness at her life. Her husband knew her well enough to know that she needed to cope with it in her own way. He had brought her out of the darkness and into the light, and she had to navigate the brightness in a way only she could understand.

As the years passed and she thought less and less of the man that gave her one of her greatest gifts, she finally felt peace with the way things happened. Bella knew that he had always been going down a destructive path, and that no amount of direction from her was ever going to change his course. He was steadfast in his decisions and in his ultimate demise. Bella was lucky to escape his clutches when she did, or it could have been her with him that fateful summer night.

^/^\^

She stopped once, at the site of the accident, to try and feel connected to him again. She spoke to him, hoping that she would get an answer back, but knowing that it was impossible.

"Do you know how sorry I am, for what happened to you? That I felt it was my fault that you died? Because I chose not to take you with me that day; that I led you straight to the end of your life?" Bella's breathing was becoming rapid and the tears started to form in the corners of her eyes.

"To know that I could have kept you here? You'd still be alive. It's terrible for me to be so relieved now that you're gone. I don't have to worry about where you are, what you're up to, or even who you're with. You always told me that you weren't redeemable in the eyes of God, but I think you were. You were the victim of your life. Now, you can finally be rid of all that you were afflicted by and be at peace. I'll miss you."

As she turned to leave, with her hand resting on the door handle, she spoke one last time to him.

"Edward, he's a good man. He'll take care of us. You can rest peacefully now, Emmett."


End file.
